You are using Internet Explorer 8 to view this site. IE8 is a 6-year-old browser that does not display modern web sites properly. Please upgrade to a newer browser to make best use of this site. Contact your local library branch if you require assistance. For more information, see this FAQ page.

Baker & TaylorSecret agent Alec Leamas is on a dangerous mission in East Berlin, but he has doubts about the organization he serves.

McMillan Palgrave

A new hardcover edition of the book Graham Greene called “the best spy story I have ever read.”

On its publication in 1964, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carré combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports anyone who reads it back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s, when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was hailed as a classic as soon as it was published, and it remains one today.

Holtzbrinck02

A new hardcover edition of the book Graham Greene called “the best spy story I have ever read.”

On its publication in 1964, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carré combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports anyone who reads it back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s, when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was hailed as a classic as soon as it was published, and it remains one today.

From the critics

Community Activity

Comment

My first John Le Carré book, and definitely not my last. It's one of the best spy books I've read, although it seemed as if the main character didn't have a plan until about halfway through the book. Great plot twist at the end, and ultimately the book ended the way it should.

Too conversational/interrogational as one reader has said and references to departmental bureaucracies making it hard to understand and follow, and understanding their allegiances. My expectations of this book was not realized even though it is considered one of the very best spy novels.

I had read many glowing reviews about this book and had been excited to read it. Maybe I'm just not suited to the whole spy genre, but I didn't enjoy this as much I thought I would. The first chapter drew me in, but the rest of the book held considerably less action and was more conversational/interrogational. The twist near the end caught me, and I enjoyed the last few chapters, but overall, I found the book a bit dull.

le Carre's best? Possibly. It's hard to say. I'd watched the movie prior to reading the book (I know, it's a sin), so the ending wasn't as powerful as it should have been. An interesting in-between point for le Carre. His later novels become more fragmentary because of flash backs. In this one, you can see how he starts to break away from straight-forward storytelling, but it isn't a terrible amount of work to keep with the plot.

Summary

Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin, is sent on a difficult mission. He is asked to play a disgraced agent, a target of ridicule, and therefore be able to infiltrate deep into communist territory.

Quotes

"Leamas watched him take a cigarette from the box on the table, and light it. He noticed two things: that Peters was left-handed, and that once again he had put the cigarette in his mouth with the maker's name away from him, so that it burns first. It was a gesture Leamas liked: it indicated that Peters, like himself, had been on the run." pg.73